BRYONY DUNN & THE FOREST, Fieldfest, July 25

Further evidence that the popular music I wrote about in Melody Maker over 50 years ago transcends generations hit me with a pleasing splash of harmonic momentum yesterday as I listened to Bryony Dunn & The Forest, a quartet – singer/guitarist, keyboards, bass and drums – who, I was told, live on Leith Hill, an idyllic woodland a few minutes’ drive from our home between Guildford and Dorking where I used to walk our dog Shiloh. 

Sisters Bryony and Gina sing and play acoustic guitar and keyboards respectively, the latter switching to harmonium to create the ominous Nico-like drone that opened their set at Fieldfest, now an annual event in our little village. Bass player Catherine Lawyer adds a top range harmony vocal, swinging the long neck of her Fender-like guitar, all the while dancing around and occasionally jumping up and down, a bit punkish, which belies their obvious influences, Seventies-era Fleetwood Mac, with a strain of country, maybe what The Bangles might have sounded like if they wore cowboy hats. Or, then again, with their long white skirts, puckish stage presence and songs about the environment, the granddaughters of the Incredible String Band. 

I don’t know the name of their (male) drummer and the lack of an electric guitarist, as seen on their website, suggests they weren’t at full complement at Fieldfest. Nevertheless, this didn’t matter because it was their vocal attack that impressed me the most, a surprisingly fat and full choral landscape that, if fortune favours their calling, is likely to become their distinctive trademark. Much is made of how remarkable brothers can sound when they sing together – for starters think Everly, Wilson, even Gallagher – but sisters too, like Este, Danielle and Alana in Haim, can also offer up something quite special, be it in unison or harmony. 

        Much of the group’s material was original, about eight songs in all, but they offered up two covers, Sheryl Crow’s ‘All I Wanna Do’, complete with rap-like verses, playful and unexpected, and ‘Gold Dust Woman’ from Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 eponymous LP that introduced the world to Stevie Nicks and Lyndsey Buckingham. “My favourite group,” admitted Bryony which surprised me not one jot. 

For all that the familiar aroused the crowd, many of whom sat beneath gazebos to shield themselves from the sun, I was more intrigued by their original songs, most of whose titles I didn’t catch but which can no doubt be found on their six-song debut EP, Soft As Ash, released late last year. Some were bouncy pop, others mellower like ‘My Love’, a song of longing, and ‘Never Trust A Cowboy’, a dire warning along the lines of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson’s ‘Mamas Don’t Let You Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys’ that displayed their country leanings.  

I wish them luck. 

This photograph was taken from the web.
The inferior one at the top of this post was taken by me.

BARROWLAND: THE INSIDE STORY OF GLASGOW’S BELOVED BALLROOM by Alison Irvine

Books about venues invariably dwell on the artists who have performed there, even though the reality is that they have spent a fraction of the time on the premises compared to the regular staff. The act arrives after their road crew, probably do a sound check, hang around in the dressing room and play the gig, spending at most four or five hours there, perhaps less if their overnight accommodation is close at hand and they can nip back to ‘rest’. The staff, however, are there night after night, arriving hours before the doors open and remaining on site to clear up the mess afterwards, so it stands to reason that their experiences are more profound than those who take the applause, no matter how famous they might be. 

        Alison Irvine understands this. Had her love letter to Barrowland, Glasgow’s much-loved palace of entertainment, been written by a specialist music writer then it would have been act-centred, like several other venue books on my shelves. Alison, however, is not a rock writer, though she could probably make a decent fist of becoming one if she tried; in fact, she’s a novelist whose forte is creating fiction from within the environments she knows and loves. Her book about Barrowland is certainly not fiction – but it is about an environment she came to know and love as she spent time there, with a far greater emphasis on the men and women who have worked there, many for years, and a host of regular patrons, than on the acts that have drawn the crowds. 

So, after a preliminary piece about how Simple Minds brought Barrowland back to life by filming their video for ‘Waterfront’ at the venue in 1983, we are introduced to Tam who runs the burger bar, and a couple of regulars, Sharon and Pammy, who love to dance, thus establishing the theme that runs throughout the book: that is it is the staff, the barmen and women, the crew, the security, the cloakroom attendants, the house photographer, the whole lot of them from general manager Tom Joyce, who contributes a foreword, to the cleaners, that have made Barrowland what it is to the people of Glasgow. 

As such, it’s a book about the Barrowland community as much as the building or the music. Famous now for its yellow neon sign, it was opened in 1934 for ballroom dancing, and an early photograph shows couples with men in uniform, their partners in below-the-knee skirts, the band in evening dress, a far cry from the hands-in-the air, crammed throng watching The Pogues at the book’s conclusion.  

        Adjacent to the Barras street market with its 120 stalls, the building was largely destroyed by fire in 1958, after which it was rebuilt, and from 1983 onwards it has operated as Glasgow’s premier concert venue, capacity 1,900, famed also for its sprung dance floor. Voted ‘best music venue in the UK’ by Time Out magazine, Alison Irving investigates just why so many staff and fans have taken the venue to their hearts, teasing out behind the scenes stories. Granted an Access All Areas pass, her mission was to discover how Barrowland ticks, and she has succeeded, interviewing everyone with a story to tell, staff and fans alike, occasionally offering fly-on-wall, sometimes heart-rending, accounts of situations and circumstances often overlooked by less skilled observers.

Originally published in 2019 as a limited edition under the title Barrowland Ballads, this 2025 edition has an additional seven chapters that bring the Barrowland story up to date, following its closure for Covid in March 2020 and reopening in May 2021. It has 328 pages and is illustrated with colour photographs throughout.